Antoun Saadeh

Antoun Saadeh (1 March 1904-8 July 1949) was a Lebanese politician who was the founder of the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP). His party was anti-France, and he resisted imperialism in the Middle East with the SSNP. In 1949 the SSNP declared a revolution in Lebanon and Saadeh was promised support by Syria, but Syria turned him over to the Lebanese government, which executed him.

Biography
Antoun Saadeh was born on 1 March 1904 in Dhour el-Choueir, Beirut Vilayet, in the Ottoman Empire (present-day Dhur el-Chueir, Mount Lebanon Governorate, Lebanon) to a family of Greek Orthodox Christians. From 1919 to 1920 he lived with his uncle in New Mexico in the United States, and in 1921 he moved to Brazil with his father. In 1924, Saadeh formed a secret society that sought the unification of Greater Syria, including all religious and ethnic groups; in 1930 he returned to Lebanon and on 16 November 1932 he secretly founded the Syrian Social Nationalist Party (SSNP) while teaching German at the American University of Beirut. In 1935, when the SSNP's existence was announced, he was imprisoned, and he was released and arrested three times by 1937. In 1938, Saadeh left Lebanon to speak to the Lebanese diaspora, founding the "New Syria" newspaper in Brazil, and from 1939 to 1947 he lived in Argentina during World War II. Saadeh was under fire from the Allied Powers and Zionists for his perceived anti-Semitism; the logo of the SSNP was a mixture of the Christian cross and Muslim crescent, but it was seen as a "swastika" by some, while the "Social Nationalist" name was similar to the "National Socialist" goals of the Nazi Party. He denied being a Hitlerite or a fascist, and said that he simply wanted to establish a social nationalist country in the Greater Syria region.

On 2 March 1947, Saadeh returned to Lebanon after the country's independence from France, and on 4 July 1949 the SSNP declared a revolution in response to the government's violence against SSNP members. The government of Syria agreed to support him, but when Saadeh went to Syria after the rebellion was crushed, President Husni al-Za'im handed him over to Lebanese authorities. Saadeh was captured, tried, and executed by firing squad within two days, the shortest and most secretive trial given to a political offender.